


A Song To Set The World On Fire

by Littlebiscuits



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 14:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14499420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebiscuits/pseuds/Littlebiscuits
Summary: You don't get to choose. You don't get to say no.





	A Song To Set The World On Fire

Everyone talks about it, it's just one of those things that kids do. Working through the excitement and the fear of it. Making it something better, worse, more horrible that it will ever be. Everyone gets at least one. The person you just know that you belong with, the person you fit in a way that you never quite will with anyone else. You react to each other the first time you touch, immediately and intensely, you couldn't help it.

"What if it's someone gross and old, what would you do?" Ruth jabs a spoon in Rook's direction across the lunch table, making him frown at being both singled out and spattered with yoghurt. 

"Old like late twenties, or old like fifties?" Megan asks next to her, where she's carefully unwrapping a blue cupcake.

"My God, could you _imagine_?"

"What if it's a baby, and you have to wait, like, _decades_ until they're old enough to date," Billy suggests. 

"That happened to my cousin Jerome," Megan says, like she hasn't mentioned it before, a dozen times. "He was twenty seven and she was twelve. So creepy, I don't even want to think about it."

"What if it was a serial killer?" Tommy Simpson says over half a burger. "Someone really fucked up, who mutilates people and dumps their bodies in the woods."

"If my soulmate is a serial killer, I'm changing my name and moving to Australia," Megan offers from across the table.

"But they'd know," Billy points out, with maybe a bit too much relish. "They'd probably follow you there."

"Serial killers don't deserve soulmates," Ruth says simply. 

"What if you touch your soulmate and they feel _nothing_." Megan drops her cupcake wrapper in the garbage, and sets her chin on her hand. "God, what would that kind of rejection even feel like?"

"That almost never happens," Tommy says, spitting bits of lettuce everywhere. 

Rook listens to them, feeling irritated and uneasy.

He convinces his best friend, Billy, to start grabbing him with a pin in his hand, or the end of a screw, until he can shake it and not flinch at all. His hands don't thank him for it, but it works surprisingly well.

"You're kind of messed-up, you know that right?" It's said with a weird sort of fondness, which Rook thinks he should probably be grateful for, rather than annoyed about.

"I don't like surprises," Rook offers with a shrug, when really it's more of a confused, unsettled feeling at the thought of someone knowing, someone knowing immediately that they're important to him, maybe the most important person he'll ever meet. Someone who might not be as happy with what they get. But mostly it's the thought that he doesn't really get to say no. What if you really wanted to say no?

"Besides," Billy adds. "My mom says it was amazing, that it was literally the best moment of her life. She said you don't feel like you were whole without them, and all that bullshit. If it feels good, I don't think that you stabbing yourself is going to help."

He turns round, catches Rook frowning.

"Dude, I'm not grabbing you and giving you a handjob at the same time," Billy says flatly.

Rook punches him with half as much force as he kind of wants to.

"You worry too much," Billy tells him, which is probably true. "It'll just be some girl, and you'll realise you're a fucking idiot."

 

~

 

Years later, Rook wears gloves as much as he can. Childhood reassurances coloured over by adult cynicism. He touches too many drunks, too many assholes, too many people that hate themselves, and are banking everything on the promise of someone who'll save them. He falls into law enforcement, because there isn't much else he's good at. He figures 'Deputy' has a nice enough ring to it. Though it turns out to be something of a trial by fire.

Eden's Gate is an explosion just waiting to happen, and it doesn't help that everyone knows it. That everyone can feel it from the moment they set down. Rook does what he's told, watches his ass, and hopes to hell that Burke doesn't get them all burned at the fucking stake. He lays a gloved hand on Joseph Seed's back in the church, and walks him to the helicopter while the world gnashes its teeth behind him. 

Of course then everything goes to hell, and before he knows it he's upside down in burning wreckage, watching the world swim around him.

He's reaching for the headset, reaching for the swing and lurch of it, trying to help himself - when Joseph Seed grasps his bare wrist.

No explanation Rook has read has ever done it justice. It's like someone reached inside and pointed out an empty space he'd never felt before. It's personal and _devastating_. Because the tight loop of fingers on his arm, that's who can fill that space. This is what Rook's been waiting for, what he's always been waiting for. They should be together. They need each other to be whole. The man touching him, the man holding him can make everything fit right.

A man like Joseph Seed, all broken angles, righteous fury and madness. Just waiting for a match to set the world on fire. 

_Jesus._

Still the _weight_ of it. Rook had asked once, how could you be sure, how could you be certain that you got it right? What if you were wrong, what if you made a mistake? He hadn't understood. Rook knows that nothing else, no one else, will ever feel like this. He'll never want anything as much as this. It makes no sense at all. It's insanity.

Seed's hand flexes, shocked, before it tightens, before the man leans in, almost instinctively. There's a shaken exhale that almost wants to be a word, warm against Rook's face. In Seed's expression there's something amazed, something like hope. It's splintered and sharp, desperate. 

Rook has spent his whole life waiting for this moment, half dreading it, half bracing for it. And maybe the younger part of him had still been a little hopeful, had been curious about who, about when, about how long he'd have to wait. It's the hardest thing Rook has ever done, to not react at all. He holds himself still and wary, caught half reaching for the headset's tangled lead. He tries his best to look confused - to look angry, or unsettled, something else, please, anything else - at the intensity of Seed's stare. While his heart thunders like it will kill him in his chest, and his throat feels like someone is clawing it open. He hopes, desperately, that Joseph Seed finds nothing in his face at all.

There's a moment of stillness, of impossible quiet in the mangled wreck that was Rook's life.

Joseph Seed's expression falters, for a second it's confused, adrift. And then Rook watches hope slowly crack into pieces, leaving nothing but devastation behind.

"No one is coming to save you," he says, very softly.

He lets go, unpeels his fingers with some difficulty from Rook's arm, and leaves the helicopter. 

Rook can breathe again, which is good, because he needs it all to run.


End file.
